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China Plans to Surpass the U.S. in Nanotech Development
SoyChemist writes "Sociologists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting have reported that China is making major investments in nanotechnology. Their aim is to 'leapfrog' past the United States in technological development by focusing on long-ranging scientific goals. So far, the Chinese government has poured about $400 million into the young field of research. Considering the low cost of equipment and labor over there, that is a very large sum of money, and China's investment is expected to 'rise considerably.'"
Last time China tried a great leap forward..didn't work out so well.
'Number-memorizing Chinese people.'-Anon
If the Chinese government actually does put its weight behind this plan, I don't see that there's much the U.S. can do : China has the advantage of much cheaper labor, equipment, and so on and so forth, in addition to an extremely powerful, centralized government that is not at all afraid to use that power.
Since when does developing nano technology require brute force cheap labor and low tech equipment?
Nano Tech will require bright minds and very highend industrial technology. Currently, the US leads China in both fields.
Life is not for the lazy.
Looks like somebody wants more funding and is raising the China bogeyman to do it.
Okay, great. So instead of Grey Goo, we're going to end up with a Red Goo situation?
I don't know if the equipment is much cheaper. A lot of precision scientific equipment comes from Germany, Japan and America still -- which China does not make (yet).
What scares people about China is not that it is getting ahead but that we're open to their citizens but they are not really open to us (for instance, no foreign companies can have more than 49% ownership in a domestic company over there).
In some ways, other than the cheap doo-dads, it seems like a one sided relationship and that in the long term only China will benefit from it.
In the end, all great countries have declined. This has happened to China as well in the past. From what I see in history, it's usually when a people, as a whole, want to live for today with no thought of tomorrow.
It can be achieved by living off the riches of their past instead of working/producing themselves which got their predecessors to where they were. It's seen in our media companies who can't bear the thought of letting go of old systems or even 80 year old cartoons (Steamboat Willy), songs, etcetera. It's seen in many rich families too - the 1st generation works hard and brings in the billions, the second generation generally doesn't have to work quite as hard but enough to keep the empire afloat, and the 3rd generation tends to squander the luxury they grew up with. You can see the same trend in successful immigrant families as well.
Nationwide -- just look at the deficits being run up this year (3 trillion dollar budget!) -- the politicians are directly mortgaging our and our children's future for some frivolous spending today -- and there will be consequences even though they seem distant -- extremely high taxes or high inflation wiping out the middle class.
America isn't falling behind because of China's size. Switzerland never really looked America enviously and wistfully wondered if only they had our size and population, what great things they could achieve technologically - they are the leaders in many technological areas of the world. And China only surpassed Germany as top exporter recently even though Germany has less than 1/15 the population.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/11/23/wto.germany.role/index.html
It's generally in the attitude of the leaders and people as a whole. Not the size of the country.
As someone who has actually worked with academics and entrepreneurs in this field, I call bullshit on this. No professional scientist or engineer I've met has spent a moment's thought on what any putative "don't play God" faction thinks, or even thinks he needs to. There's zero evidence that any such faction, should it even exist outside of your imagination, has ever had any significant effect on technological advancement in this country.
Furthermore, my experience suggests that the Chinese have a much more substantial and real cultural barrier to any kind of technological progress (which is, I think, one reason why a society civilized a thousand years before the West, and having had a far larger population for far longer, has nevertheless consistently lagged behind the West in terms of invention and innovation, at least on a per capita basis).
The problem is that the Confucian tradition strongly reinforcea an acceptance of existing heirarchy, and of paying the utmost respect to your elders and those better educated and more experienced than yourself. This is antithetical to innovation and invention. The only way you can invent something new is by doing something that older and wiser heads think is foolish. (If they didn't think it was dumb, they'd have done it themselves already.)
Consequently true innovation happens only in a culture that does not value established wisdom too much, which is willing to take some chances on a young, hot-headed, crazy contrarian way of thinking. China has a long and strong cultural tradition of valuing established wisdom, and I think that is a much more significant cultural barrier to innovation than any silly Chicken-Little faddish fear that evangelicals are going to rise up and smite researchers working on nanoscopic gears and motors because the latter weren't described in the Bible.
USA lacks national technological goals now and no matter how bright the minds, if they don't have a supporting environment then they will not reach their potential.
China is working as a nation whiich means they will get further with what they have.
Money and equipment don't make for winning. Here's the story of the 1996 Americas Cup: The US team had the might of Boeing (Crays etc) and fleets of white coats to do their math modelling etc. The kiwis had a corner in their warehouse with a couple of SGI workstations. The kiwis achieved more with their math modelling because the math guy was onsite and slept on the floor next to his computers. They used what equipment they had with maximum effectiveness.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Second: How much high end equipment does the USA import from China?
And you're trying to suggest they don't have industrial technology?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
"has nevertheless consistently lagged behind the West in terms of invention and innovation
Let's see - China had the sundial, sextant, gunpowder and circumnavigation of the planet under their belt long before the west stopped playing with dolls and you make a claim like that?
They were tossed back to the stone age during world war two, courtesy the Japanese, and basically left to rot by the West - they are just now regaining technical traction. The Chinese used to lead the planet in terms of innovation and they want that honor back. They will leapfrog the industrial revolution and plow headlong directly into the technological revolution while the rest of the world sits and watches.
Nano Tech will require bright minds and very highend industrial technology. Currently, the US leads China in both fields.
The problem with the "bright minds" that the US leads with is that America doesn't really produce them domestically any more. The US imports most of its bright minds nowadays and from where is it getting a lot of them? China.
Sure, some of those bright minds stay in America after they are sharpened in American universities and steeled in American corporations. . .but quite a few go home too. Think about it. . .you are a smart Chinese engineer with a great idea. Do you stay in America to develop your idea; hiring expensive, dumb-assed, lazy, and worthless trailer park punks to staff your fledgling company or do you go back to China to get the ball rolling? Tough decision, isn't it? Not!
Now, about that high end industrial technology. How far behind the US do you really think China is? (Keep in mind that most of the high tech goodies that Americans like to consume are produced in China). Do you think they are 25 to 30 years behind America? Wrong! Try 3 to 5 years behind - at the best! With a population way over a billion and a university system that is growing at warp speed, China is whittling that lead down fast.
Your national chauvinism likely blinds you to the fact, but China has, so far, reached all of the major technological milestones that they have set for themselves. Your comment about "low tech equipment" also suggests that you have not been there lately. Sure, there are still some places in the hinterlands where farmers continue to use water buffalo to prepare their rice fields, but the same is true for Japan. This is actually a good thing and means that China still has an opportunity to preserve some of their cultural heritage before it fades into history by turning some of these communities into domestic tourist destinations. The rest of China, however, is well into the process of becoming a 21st century megapower. You don't have to like that fact, but it is healthier to come to grips with it.
Uh, this is slashdot. Some of us don't think that "ass fuck" is a grammatically correct way of placing the direct object after the verb.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Assuming, of course, that the US simply don't just hire away all of their best and brightest, like it have been for a long time now. How do you think those professors got here in the first place?
That settles it. I'm moving my business to Islam. Is the weather good there? How are the schools and will my wife enjoy the shopping?
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Sextants are derived from quadrants and astrolables, both Arab inventions.
Sundials were used by the ancient Egyptians and it's rather unlikely they got them from China -- it's probably something that's been invented many times in many places.
'Circumnavigation' appears to be an idea from Gavin Menzies' book and has little scholarly support (probably lots of *political* support) even in China and nothing resembling actual evidence, although like the Da Vinci Code it's probably going to be remembered as real history by hordes of idiots.
Manchu China was technologically and politically stagnant for a LONG time before the Japanese arrived, and Ming China had been technologically and politically stagnant for an even longer time before that, which is how the Manchurians were able to conquer China in the first place.
HTH
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
"Worse"? Both capitalism and communism can be, and often are, terrible.
For example, economist Amartya Sen, who won a Noble Prize, did a comparison of India's democratic capitalist experiment with that of the Chinese famine, and the Chinese communist experiment. His work "Hunger and Public Action" estimated the deaths caused by the famines in China to be around 16.5 to 29.5 million. Most estimates regarding the total deaths from the Chinese communist experiment are said to be around 100 million.
Although India didn't have a famine similar to China, Sen notes that "as far as morbidity, mortality and longevity are concerned, China has a large and decisive lead over India", and that "India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame".
In other words, the democratic capitalist experiment in India from 1947 resulted in more deaths that the entire Communist track record since 1917. By 1979, there were an estimated 100 million deaths in India already.
And before we forget, the Russian capitalist experiment that was prescribed by advisers such as the IMF and World Bank resulted in approximately 3.4 million Russian deaths until about 1998, while others put the figure up to about 15 million premature deaths, with a projected decline of 30% in the population over the coming decades.
The fact is, both systems have had terrible track records.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
We've been able to do that because all the money was over here. However, between trade deficits and government borrowing, we've been working really hard on sending that money over to China lately. So before long it may not make much sense for their best and brightest to come over here when they can get paid with US cash right in their own hometowns.
Islam was taken over by its own fundamentalists, too.
.sig, China wants the trappings of science, the technology. To really have the science, you need freedom of thought. The real question about China is whether they will grant sufficient freedom of thought for scientific leadership, and then find that they can't cram the genie back into the bottle.
We're following steps they have trod, about a thousand years later, with our Christian Fundamentalists.
But I still don't see China stepping into the leadership role, the way they're planning. Look at my
Back before the Iraq war, I suggested that Saddam had "his most loyal scientists" working feverishly on WMD. Had he had "his best scientists" working on them, they might have achieved something. I see something of the same quandary for China, as long as the Party insists on retaining absolute political power.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Quoth the poster "What scares people about China is not that it is getting ahead but that we're open to their citizens but they are not really open to us"
I must disagree. I've been to China, and I'm going back soon. It was _very_ easy to obtain a visa as an American citizen.
I have a very dear friend in China who wanted to come here. She could not obtain a visa - a tourist visa - to visit the USA. The requirements and the questions asked are amazingly intrusive. It is very difficult for a citizen of the PRC to obtain a tourist visa to come to the USA.